Duz was a guy I boxed with back in the 1980s, who is a full-blooded Polish-American with freakish strength and astonishing injury resilience. He is the guy beating me up in The Logic of Force. Although he only weighs about 195 he has retard strength. He once fell from 20 feet in a stock room, onto a pallet of onions, got up, brushed himself off, and went back to work.

He was once hit by a late model Buick while running from two armed robbers. He told me about this in between bench press sets while he pumped weights at the gym a few hours later.

His head was so damned hard that, when we sparred, I used to pray that’s he’d finally slip a punch so my hands could heal.

Finally, one day Duz told me he wanted to fight—to go all out to the finish in a boxing match with four once gloves. I agreed, got floored three times, fought off the wall while he body checked me and pounded away [we did this in my concrete basement] for what seemed forever, digging hooks to his body for minutes, never letting him land a clean shot. Eventually I got off the wall, began to circle and jab, and he tapped out, unable to breathe.

I spent three days in bed, with the inside and outside of my arms bruised, and even my ribs bruised from him punching “threw” my arms and smashing them into my body.

Duz, on the other hand, “Got drunk, banged Scaggy Aggie, and went for a five mile run…”

Five years later I met Duz at Tattoo Rick’s bar to interview him about his violent life. S. J., my current roommate, was also there. Duz had not seen me since I had let my hair grow down my back, and was inspired by my grungy appearance to tell a tale of lust and concession.

Duz suffers from a full blown case of Jungle Fever, and when he was younger used to drive a hot pink 54 Cadillac. At this point, in 1996, he was driving a big rice burner and managing a ghetto supermarket, which all the black employees thought was his cover for being "an FBI agent or something," since he looked "so ridiculously white and uptight."

“So, I can’t date the cashiers—until they get fired. When I fire them—if they qualify—I get their phone number.

“Liked this one girl.

“Waited a few days and called.

“She says she’d love to go out, but needed money for a baby sitter.

“‘Noooo, problem—be right over.’

“She meets me at the door, dolled up, kids playing with some tall, skinny, greasy, long-haired white guy.

“I give her the money.

“She walks over to Dude and gives it to him.

“I said, ‘Who is that?’

“She said, ‘That’s the babies’ daddy.’

“I said, ‘I’m not paying any man to watch his own kids!’

“She says, ‘He won’t watch them unless I pay him.’

“Then Dude gets up off the couch, steps over this low ceramic tile or marble coffee table and pushes me with one hand—which does nothing—and tells me to leave.

“Forearm smash to the chest—he flies back over the coffee table.

“I step over [Duz just grabs my long hair and balls it up in his meaty fist as I notate] and start punching the face, haven’t beat the shit out of anyone in a long time—feeling reeeeeeal good.

“Then she jumps on my back and starts screaming and hitting me, so I reversed grip on his hair and began smashing the face into the coffee table—ooooh yeah! Then, I walk away, shake her off and walk out the door—and here I sit, fucking feeling right!”

[I was now leaning back over the bar as he snarled in my face and twisted my hair.]

S.J. spoke up, “Hey, Duz, so did you get your money back?”

Duz let go of my hair and looked confusedly at S.J. and, after a moment, confessed, “No, I forgot all about it until now.”

S.J. continued, “So, would you say beating that guy up was worth the money you lost?”

“Hell yes!” snarled Duz.

S.J. crowned the interview he had hijacked with, “Well, then maybe you ought to call her back and set up another date. I’m sure the money was worth the beating he took. You three could develop a symbiotic relationship.”